


Out of mind

by queenchingshih



Category: American Horror Story
Genre: Canon divergence after 1x08, F/M, Past Rape Mentions, Self Harm, Split Personality Theory, Time Travel, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-11
Updated: 2012-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-18 10:20:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/559928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenchingshih/pseuds/queenchingshih
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Violet dies and wakes up in the year 1994 still dead and with a chance of preventing everything that happens in the future. But you can't always change the past and some things are set in stone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of mind

**Author's Note:**

> First written in 2011 during the broadcast of AHS: Murder House. Most recently edited 18/11/15. Fixed tense shift and flow issues.

She's holding on tight to one of the twins and she has no idea where the other one is. The thought makes her feel like a failure of a big sister but she can't worry about that now. She has to keep moving, has to reach the front door and sprint across the lawn and out on to the road. Then she'll be safe, then her and the little girl in her arms can escape the horrors.

And her twin brother will be left behind all alone and _it'll be all your fault_.

The unbidden thought stops her in her tracks. The house is silent, her breathing loud from panic. She realizes then that she's been walking in the wrong direction to reach the front door. It was almost as if the house had turned her around. The baby in her arms is oddly quiet and peaceful, staring up at her with dark eyes innocently.

_Weren't all babies supposed to have blue eyes when they were new born?_

She thought that babies never stopped crying, neither the little girl nor her twin had cried when they'd been born. It was more than a little eerie. Thinking about their birth brought a sudden stabbing pain upon her heart. Mom. Vivian had died birthing the twins in the mental hospital they'd locked her up in. She can't find it in herself to hate the twins though, can't even bring herself to cry over her dead mother.

 _It's all your fault_.

A sudden bang from downstairs causes her to jump and remember herself. She shouldn't be standing around like this, like she's _waiting_ for Hayden to catch up to her. She had to get out and find her dad- no, first she had to find the other twin. Violet could never forgive herself if she left him behind. She starts moving again and of course the moment she turns a corner she runs into a ghost. It's Nora and she's cooing over Violet's little brother as if he were her own. Violet stares at her a moment, debating over whether she can trust her.

"Nora?" She says meekly and the baby in her arms yawns. Nora looks up sharply at the words but seems to relax when she sees Violet. A brilliant smile springs to her lips.

"I found my baby, look I found him. Isn't he beautiful?" She gushes with an excited tone. Violet's eyes widen. "And look, you have one too! Aren't babies just the most precious thing in the world?" She smiles so sweetly at Violet then that her heart wrenches.

"No, Nora that isn't your baby. It's my mom's. Your baby is dead, like you." She doesn't mean for it to come out so harsh but it does and Nora shoots her a hurt look.

"But he is my baby. How could you say such a thing?" She retorts in a scolding tone as she rocks the baby boy back and forth in her arms. "He said he'd give me a baby and look!" She sighs softly, blissfully as she looks down at the newborn.

" _He_?" Violet repeats. What is Nora talking about?

"Oh he's such a sweet boy, I rather think you would like him dear. Always looking out for me and this old house." Nora continues and something akin to dread sweeps coldly through Violet's body. _No_. Before she can think much more on Nora's words a new presence makes itself known.

"There you are." The drawling voice of Hayden sounds from behind them. Violet slowly turns around and tries to ignore the spike of fear running through her.

_I'm not afraid of anything._

"We've been looking all over for you." Hayden advance towards her, forcing Violet to step back and almost collide with Nora who gives what sounds like an offended huff before moving out of the way to watch from the sidelines.

"Go away!" Violet screams, just like how Tate taught her to. She waits for Hayden to disappear but she doesn't. The women throws her head back and laughs madly at her attempt to be rid of her.

"That's not going to work tonight I'm afraid. Now hand over my baby like a good little girl." She says it in a patronizing tone that rubs Violet the wrong way, she hates being patronized. Especially by crazy whore bitches like Hayden. 

"She's not your baby, you stupid bitch!" Violet hisses. Her words just seemed to act as fuel to the flame of Hayden's poorly concealed rage as she snarls like some sort of animal before leaping forward. Violet can do little to fight her off without dropping the baby but gets a kick in there that pushes Hayden away from her for a fraction of a moment before she was back again and prying Violet's fingers off the hold she's managed to retain on her little sister.

"Don't hurt the poor girl now." Comes Nora's soft voice over Hayden's hisses and Violet's own cries. Hayden seems to pay the other ghost no mind.

Before she knows it, she's lost her grip on the baby and Hayden is standing off beside Nora with the little girl happily resting in her arms. It's all Violet can do to hold back a chocked sob. She rushes forward then, intending to get both her siblings back off the crazy ghost bitches if it's the last thing she does. But she's hardly made it two steps when a latex covered chest blocks her vision and any hopes of rescuing the twins.

She slowly drags her eyes up to it's masked face to stare into its black, black eyes. She gulps and begins to back away slowly, dismayed to notice him continuing to advance upon her. Violet chances one last look at the twins, content in the arms of women who are neither fit for motherhood before she turns tail and runs. 

Because what else can she do but that?

She ends up in her own room by wrong turn and finds herself trapped with the rubberman standing in the door frame. The sobs she's been holding back break then as she collapses to her knees in defeat. Too much has happened in this house, too goddamn much and it breaks everyone and now it has broke her. It'll break her dad too she knows, it's break him to find her poor broken body and then they'll break him too. The house will eat up their very souls. She watches through her tears as her murderer slowly walks over to her and then he's kneeling too, in front of her and pulling off his mask and she doesn't want to know. She can't see his face, she can't. But the mask comes off and there is her beautiful Tate underneath.

Later she'll wonder why she didn't feel all too surprised.

"No," she moans low like a wounded animal. It feels like her heart has been wrenched out of her body and trodden on right then and there. There's so much pain, there's so much.

"I'm so sorry Vi," he whispers and he's crying too. Then there's a pillow over her face and she can't breathe. _Can't breathe. Can't breathe._ Her body thrashes wildly then... slowly... settles. 

* * *

Violet opens her eyes and is greeted with the white of her bedroom ceiling.

Her head feels like it's been used as a drum set and her body feels so heavy that she doesn't think she'll ever be able to move again. Slowly she lifts herself up off the ground and rubs that back of her head slowly, her brow twisted in a frown. What had happened? She remembers running through the house, being more scared than she'd ever been in her life - _I'm not afraid of anything_ \- Hayden and Nora and... the twins! Her eyes widen and she looks around frantically. That's when she notices it's not her room she's standing in. Well, it is. It's the same color blue, the same general shape but it's filled with items and furniture she's never seen in her life. She stares around her, confused for a few moments at what should be her room filled with her stuff. There's an outdated stereo player in one corner, a pile of books on a little desk in another. She wanders around in a daze. She goes over to the desk and flips open one of the books. It's about birds of the rain forest. Something stabs at her familiar as she stares at the book. Her eyes then drift away from it to land on the solitary picture frame on the desk. She picks it up with trembling hands and stares at it long and hard. It's the same picture Constance showed her of Tate and Addie.

_I'm so sorry Vi._

She drops the picture frame with a gasp, it all coming back to her now. Tate, Tate in the suit, Tate smothering her-

_Am I dead?_

Violet stares at her hands like they could hold the answer. She doesn't feel any different but she doesn't even know if you're supposed to feel different upon dying and why, why is her room not her room and filled with Tate's stuff? Because yes it has to be Tate's stuff, there is no other explanation for it. So many questions running through her head, all of them she has no answer to.

* * *

She's dead. She tries to leave the property and surprise, surprise she isn't able to. That wasn't unexpected though really, the big surprise came from picking up the day's newspaper from the porch and reading the date.

 _February 1994_. No fucking way.

* * *

Tate comes home as Violet's sitting on his bed staring off into space and wondering how the fuck she ended up dead in the nineties. He doesn't notice her as soon as he enters the room, heading straight to the desk and laying his bag on top of it. It's only when he turns in her direction and freezes that she thinks that maybe it's not such a good idea for him to see her.

Before she knows it, she's transported herself out of the room and into the corridor. Out of his sight. She lets out a sigh of relief and tells herself she's going to avoid him because really, she can't deal with all the bullshit right now. It's too much. But she finds herself peeking around the corner of his bedroom door a moment later to see him looking around his room in confusion.

 _Serves him right. Let him feel like how you did for a change._ She thinks to herself bitterly.

She meets a younger Moria on the stairs. Moria seems to look right through her with that ghost eye, to her very soul before moving on like she's never seen her at all. Violet watches her shuffle off and wonders how long she's been dead for.

* * *

Violet comes to accept her fate as it were within three days of hanging aimlessly around the house, bored out of her mind. She can sleep and every morning before she opens her eyes, she manages to convince herself that it's all a dream and her mother isn't dead, Tate isn't the one under the rubberman's mask, Tate didn't _rape her mom_ , Tate didn't smother her with a pillow, she isn't stuck in the _nineteen fucking nineties_.

But her eyes always rebelliously flicker open to take in the harsh light of day and shatter all her imaginings. Eventually she stops trying and just deals.

She watches Tate cut himself with razor blades in the bathroom and can't help but make the parallel between them. His blood flows bright red and brilliant and she's a little hypnotized by it.

_Something about all that blood man._

Sometimes she hopes he'll cut too deep and die pathetically on the bathroom floor. What a pretty picture that'd make. Red against white, blonde curls splayed across the tiles. He'd look almost angelic... tragic, like a fallen angel. She shakes her head before she gets too drunk on the thought, the fantasy.

* * *

She watches sadly from the window as a pack of kids pick on poor Addie, twenty-three years old and still getting bullied. It makes her want to kill something. She doesn't notice Tate coming to stand beside her until she hears him growl in an almost animal way at the scene unfolding before them. He's rushing outside to scare the bullies off within minuets and all she can do is watch. Violet hears one of the kids call him a freak and watches him spit at his feet.

She doesn't see that particular boy hanging around so much after that and she can't help but wonder what Tate did to him. If he did anything.

Later Violet sits in the empty seat at their dining table to watch them interact as a family. Tate glares at everything and stabs at his food. Addie looks miserable whilst taking small bites and Constance doesn't eat anything at all, but drinks from a large glass of wine. Larry is absent, working late at the office. She can hear low animal moans from all the way up in the attic where Beau resides. It makes her cringe. None of them speak, not even to ask to pass the salt. She could cut the tension with a knife and suddenly she wishes she were sitting around this dining table with her parents instead. It's a thought she never imagined she'd have. But then she'd never imagined she'd die at the hands of the boy she loves- _loved_ and end up stuck in the past.

Violet will never sit down to eat with her parents again and the thought makes her feel as depressed as the three of them look.

* * *

Violet follows Tate down to the basement one day out of pure curiosity. After all the weeks of watching him she's never seen him venture down there. He practically lived down there back (or is it forward?) in her time. She's utterly bewildered when she descends the stairs to see that Tate has disappeared entirely into the darkness.

She wonders if that thing is in the darkness right now...

Then suddenly he's pushing her against the wall and the feeling of his skin pressed against hers is so familiar and so new at the same time that it makes her dizzy.

"Gothca." He says with a stupid triumphant smirk that she's dismayed to realize she knows too well.

"Get off me!" She tries to push him but he's stronger than her and it's not so easy as the time she pushed him away in the basement after the Leah incident.

"Okay but first you gotta to tell me who you are and why you're haunting me." She stares at him and he stares back with those dark eyes, challenging.

"You know." It's a statement not a question, accompanied by a long sigh. Of course he knows.

"About the ghosts? Sure. Which one are you?" He asks and he's generally curious, his held titled like he's examining a new species of animal. Then, she guesses, as a ghost she would be seen by him as that; and if she's honest with herself, she's stared at him just the same.

"How can you see me?" No one else could see her and she thought it was the same where he was concerned, excluding that first day where he glimpsed her of course. He doesn't appear to be all too phased that she avoided his questions.

"I could always see you. I just pretended I couldn't cause I thought you were shy or something." Tate explains with a little shrug before stepping back a little to give her some space. His voice sounds so innocent.

She hasn't answered either of his questions though so his words contradict his actions. Violet wonders if he realizes this, wonders if he cares. She continues to stare at him for a long moment, debating on wether she should just teleport away and avoid him till she knows what the hell she needs to do to fix this mess. But in the end his dark brown pleading (she doesn't even know what he's pleading for her to do) eyes win her over.

"I'm Violet." And it feels so wrong introducing herself to him when he should know who she is. But he isn't _her_ Tate. He's Tate before all the bullshit and hurt and death.

"That's a pretty name." He grins.

* * *

He sleepwalks sometimes and wakes confused, standing in the basement. She takes his hand and leads him back upstairs and tucks him into bed. But there are times where she leaves him to stumble around in the dark as some kind of revenge for how much he's going to hurt her.

How much he already has, he just doesn't know it yet.

* * *

Before too long they fall back into old routines. Or at least old for her. They'll sit and listen to music in his room and talk for hours. Violet makes sure to never give too much about herself away while Tate gives everything.

She discovers that Constance pretty much ignores him whilst Larry attempts to be (embarrassingly)a father to him and Addie. Addie means the world to him and every time he thinks about everyone who hurt her it's like he sees red and wants to kill them all. He tells her that he's lonely, and he misses his dad and hates him at the same time for leaving them and that Moria hates him because he once stole some of his mother's jewelry, sold it and blamed the maid. It's like he thinks she's his own personal agony aunt or some shit and it'd piss her off if he weren't so interesting.

She can see now why her dad liked to get inside people's head's so much. It's so wrong but she feels like she knows this Tate; this living, breathing, destined for doom Tate more than her one.

* * *

The blood flows over her pale skin for half a heartbeat before the cut closes itself. It leaves her arm wet and sticky but there's no pain.

"What are you doing?" Tate asks from right behind her, like he appeared out of thin air. It's too much like freaking déjà vu for Violet. He doesn't sound worried or angry like the last time. Just curious. That's all this Tate seems to be around her. Curious.

"I just wondered if ghosts could bleed." There's no comfort to it anymore. There's no comfort in anything. He presses a damp wash cloth to her wrist and mops the drying blood up.

He smiles down at her and she hates herself for smiling back.

* * *

"So you must find me pretty interesting huh?" The question comes out of nowhere. Violet wasn't even aware that he'd noticed her come into his room what with how far his nose was into a book of Byron poems.

"What?" Ever cool and collected, she replies. Casually she moves over to his bed and sits, regretting the decision as soon as she does so. He's too close, his foot brushing against her leg. But she can't bring herself to move away. Tate still has his head buried in the book, hardly acknowledging her presence.

"Well, you're always around me, I've never seen you with anyone else now that I think about it. Not even, like, with the other ghosts." His tone is just as cool and casual as hers with just a hint of teasing underneath, like he thinks he knows something or shit.

"What are you trying to say?" Her eyes narrow like a cat's and he finally look up from his beloved poetry with a horribly false innocent look. It just helps to fuel her suspicion.

"Nothing, nothing. Just a simple observation." He drawls, going back to his book with a smile that to anyone else would look as innocent as a baby's but to her it's tainted. Everything about him is tainted now and he hasn't even done anything yet.

Another long moment passes as he reads and she examines him before he speaks again. "You know you never did tell me why you were haunting me." And there it is. She feels a little stupid for not seeing it coming. Of course he was never going to drop his question, he wasn't going to be cheated out of an answer. He'd wheedled one out of her already in the form of her name and now he wants the rest.

"I was never 'haunting' you." Lies. Tate grins and Violet knows that he knows she's bullshitting him. She never could bullshit him.

_He could bullshit you though and you'd let him._

"I know." She stiffens for a moment before relaxing, because really? How could he know? There was no way he could have worked out she was lost out of time. _But that's not what he asked you. He never asked when you came from, not even where. It was why. Why you'd been haunting him._ He places the book down beside him and leans forward."You're attracted to me."

"Excuse me?" She splutters because it honestly takes her aback.

"You are, it's so obvious. Don't deny it." Then he smirks and it's so, so _wrong_.

But she can't put her finger on why exactly. He's absently tracing the hem of her skirt now. She watches his fingers with a detached feeling. Like it's not really her sitting on the same bed as him, the air turning heavy like it used to back when she was alive. Although this heavy air doesn't have a sweet taste, it's bitter and dark, _addictive_.

Her mind is racing, not being able to connect the dots, as they were.

The feather light touch under her skirt proves to distract her far more than she'd like to admit. When did he put his hand under the skirt? Her head swims, feeling as heavy as the air. "You crave the feeling of me touching you there don't you? I bet you're already wet for me." His feather light touch ghosts over the top of her tight covered thigh, so close but so far. "Anything to make you feel alive."

Her eyes snap open. When did they close? She pushes his hand away and jumps up from the bed, moving to stand on the other side of the room. Spooked. He stares at her from across the room, still on the bed, hand hovering in the air, eyes black and glinting with something that's almost cruel. His face looks wrong. It looks exactly how it always does but there's something off about the way he's looking at her, something that makes a knot form in her stomach and a heat throb further down.

She gets out of there while she still can.

* * *

 

She haunts him because she can't stay away. Her feelings conflicted between love and hate, pain and relief. Tate's not half wrong with his assumption that she's attracted to him because of course she is. It's Tate. It's not the right Tate, not the one she trusted so foolishly. But it is him. Sometimes her head spins from it all.

It's too much.

She's sitting outside in the garden, enjoying the early spring weather and trying to forget about everything that's happened since she died. It's peaceful out there, quiet and there's no throb of dark energy forever pulsing like inside the house. But of course, good things never last.

"I didn't think I'd find you out here." She looks up as the shadow falls over her. Tate's blocking out the sun and smiling cheerfully. Before she can reply, he's sat himself down beside her on the grass. She eyes the book he's holding. A guide to British birds. Of course.

"I like it out here." She says simply and he nods, flipping the book open half way in.

"Me too." Her heart drops for a moment. "So I haven't seen you for days, I missed you." She peers at him from the corner of her eye, not sure on what to make of his words. It was like he'd done a complete turn around from the other day.

"I've been busy." She says carefully, fiddling with a blade of grass and wishing for the first time since she'd gotten trapped there that she had a cigarette.

"Oh. With what?" There's that damn curious tone again. She sighs lightly and shrugs a little, staring down at the blade of grass between her fingers.

"Ghost stuff."

"Oh." He sounds a little disappointed but what else was she supposed to say? _I've been avoiding you ever since you put your hand up my skirt and whispered filthy things in my ear that both scared me and..._ She groans a little in frustration and shakes her head.

"Are you okay? You look kind of mad." And there he goes actually sounding concerned. It makes Violet want to hit something. He wasn't supposed to do this. He wasn't supposed to make her feel things again. Not after everything he'd done to her- not after everything he was _going_ to do to her. "Look Vi-" She stiffens at the nickname "We're friends right? You are my friend, aren't you?" He sounds so insecure and young and lost that it makes all rage that she'd begun to build up evaporate. She turns her head to look at him, he's closer than she'd thought but it's comfortable.

Not like the other day at all. His eyes glint dark brown in the sun, warm. She takes a deep breath.

"Of course I am."

* * *

Violet is flicking through his book of Byron poems whilst he's in the shower without much interest. _She Walks in Beauty, Aristomenes, The First Kiss of Love, The Bride of Abydos, Darkness, I Saw Thee Weep, Devil's Drive..._ Under different circumstances she'd find them fascinating, but right now as a permanent member of the murder house in the wrong decade, she just doesn't care.

She's thinking about Tate. She should hate him, she should want him to suffer unimaginable pains, she should feel anything but sympathy for him. He's her murderer. But he isn't at the same time. He hasn't done anything-

_As far as you know_

\- to anyone. Hasn't massacred the school. Yet. Still quite a bit of 1994 to go. But it's so hard to separate her feelings, it's so hard to know if she should even attempt to. What would that say about her? She closes her eyes and rubs her temple with one hand, setting the book down with the other. She glances at the clock on the wall and frowns.

Tate has been in the shower for an awful long time. She feels a spike of sudden irrational fear-

_I'm not afraid of anything_

\- then and her mind darts to that fantasy from so many weeks ago. Red against white. Before she can form another thought, she's inside the bathroom. The steam in the room is thick and warm against the bare skin of her arms and she has to squint to see through it. She can make out Tate's dark silhouette from behind the shower curtain, upright, perfectly fine. Nothing to worry about.

She's just about to withdraw from the scene when she hears a low moan from over the spray of the shower. Unable to control her actions she slowly moves round the tub before she's found the gap in the curtain and is peering through. From this angle his back is to her, slightly hunched, tense and dripping with water.

Violet can feel her cheeks flushing hot and it has nothing to do with how warm the steam in the room is. She wonders for a wild moment then if Tate had ever watched her in the shower back when she was still breathing. She scoffs at the idea internally. It was Tate. Of course he had. He moans again and Violet's attention is drawn down. Her cheeks flush even more at the sight of what was causing him to moan so much and she feels a spike of heat travel down her own body.

It's been so long, it hits her then, so long since she'd let herself have any pleasure. She's been blocking it out, it's too heavily associated with Tate in the future, too many memories of his fingers sliding under her panties and his lips at her neck biting softly. Of how much he filled her, made her feel whole when he was inside of her. She bites her lip and feels it split and bleed for a second before predictably closing. She can't take her eyes off him, he's so beautiful and raw and her chest tightens and she can't breathe. _Can't breathe. Can't breathe._

She moans. By all accounts he shouldn't of heard her at all, not over the sounds of his own and the rush of water but by some cruel twist of fate he does and whips around so suddenly that she's surprised he doesn't slip. His eyes go impossibly, comically wide at the sight of her standing there. His already flushed cheeks turn bright red from embarrassment before he's holding the shower curtains closed and turning the water off. She would have laughed if she wasn't so turned on.

"Could you pass me a towel please?" Comes his voice, meek, behind the protection of the shower curtain. No. He wasn't going to do this to her. She was too worked up now and she needed release. Damn the consequences. She kicks off her shoes and tights and wrenches open the curtain, startling Tate for the second time before climbing in with him.

"Vi-Violet what are you doing?" He asks trying to back away from him before discovering there's no where for him to go.

Violet likes this feeling, likes that she is able to make this Tate nervous, likes that she is the predator for a change. She reaches out lightly and brushes her knuckles over his cheek, rewarded by the way he shivers at her touch. But he looks so confused. Her Tate never looked confused, not when it came to matters such as this. Her heart twists suddenly and it's like she's woken from a trance. She drops her hand and backs up. The boy in front of her isn't hers, he's different, so innocent, he hasn't hurt her.

But he will.

She climbs out of the tub and teleports back to his bedroom- her bedroom- _his_ bedroom. She sits down, back against the wall and stares at her hands, feeling empty and unsatisfied, knowing what she needs. But knowing that she can't have it. It's this house. Then he's there, this unfamiliar and familiar Tate, towel wrapped around his middle and damp hair curling over his vision. He's leaning down in front of her and his hands are warm against her cheeks. He lifts her face up, tilts it so she has to look at him. In the dark of the room his eyes look black but she feels that they're not really.

"Vi." He murmurs and she closes her eyes with a sigh. His lips brush over hers and she sighs again, into his mouth. Then the wonderful presence is gone and he's lifting her in his arms and laying her down on his bed. She forgets, forgets that everything is screwed up. She falls asleep in his arms with a murmured and mistaken 'I love you' against his chest.

How fucking tragic.

* * *

Things get weird between them and Violet's almost certain that Tate's avoiding her now. Which is funny, she thinks, considering it's impossible to avoid a ghost in the murder house. She lets him avoid her though because she's so confused and even a little ashamed of the way she acted. He doesn't get it, he'll never get it and the way she's jerking him around is turning him into a more of a confused mess than she herself is. So she gives him time, some space and tries to push the thoughts of how he didn't deserve even that to the back of her mind.

But after a solid, boring week she can't stand it anymore.

"So like I'm sorry and stuff for last week and... everything." She sounds painfully awkward even to her own ears. When she'd appeared right in front of him in the kitchen he'd looked like a deer caught in headlights and it was a wonder he didn't drop his bowel of cereal. But upon hearing her words he seems to relax some. "I shouldn't have made a move on you, it was weird, I know." She cringes as the memories that come rushing back.

"It's cool. It wasn't weird, I mean it was but not because you're dead! That doesn't... bother me." He trails off and a long silent moment is left between them before he speaks again. "I don't know how I feel about anything anymore or what's even going on." He suddenly slumps and sits down at the kitchen table, looking drained. "I feel like I'm losing my mind." Her breath hitches. "I get these insane thoughts in my head and sometimes I do things that I don't mean to do and it's just so fucked up you know? I probably need a shrink." He laughs humorlessly. She thinks about the Tate she found reading Byron and the Tate who came and sat next to her outside with a book on birds. She thinks about how different they seemed. Too different truly, almost like they were two different people. "Vi?" Tate's voice startles her out of her thoughts and she realizes she hasn't been listening to a word he's been saying.

"Yeah?" She watches him stand and take her hands in his, turning them over to reveal the scars on her wrists. He strokes one tenderly with his thumb and she feels it again. That sense of calm washing over her, clearing her mind.

"Don't ever leave me." His voice is soft and familiar and she forgets again in that moment that he's not her Tate. She smiles at him and reaches out the stoke his face.

"I won't." She doesn't know then just how true that promise will ring.

* * *

"I like birds too." She pleased to note how startled he is by her sudden appearance, at the school library of all places. She's a little proud of herself. She'd taken to wondering for hours every day whilst Tate was at school and the house was quiet- taken to wondering if she could in fact go anywhere Tate went. For whatever cruel twist of fate she seemed to be stuck to him in every way but the literal.

She's not stupid and she's had a lot of time alone to think, think in a way she can't when he's around. It's like he clouds her thoughts up and when he's away everything starts making sense again. There had to be a reason for her being trapped here and she could think of no better one that she was supposed to help him, stop him, something.

Maybe she'd been given a chance to change the future. However cliche that may sound. The point is though, that if she was supposed to help him then surely it made little sense to confide her to this house where Tate didn't even spend all of his time. So she closes her eyes and thinks of Tate and it actually works. Suddenly she's reappearing in the Westfield High library and spying Tate's blonde head from between the bookshelves.

"How are you here? I thought ghosts couldn't leave the house." He's staring at her in that way again, like she's a new specimen for him to examine and clutching his book on birds to such an extent that his knuckles are turning white. She frowns.

"Haven't you worked it out yet? I can go anywhere you go. I'm stuck to you." She replies with a smug air she really shouldn't even be using but is far too accustomed in doing. Tate stares at her, his eyes as wide and round as a puppy, lips parted slightly. Like his brain is running the information through his head, processing it and making sense of it all. She hopes he has better luck than her with that.

"Then you're haunting me because you have to." It's spoken so quietly that she almost misses it. She doesn't though and it makes her freeze before relaxing and allowing herself to marvel how he got his answers out of her without her even being consciously aware. "Why haven't you ever appeared to me outside the house before if you always could?" He points out then, ignoring his previous words completely.

"Yeah well I only just figured it out." She mumbles, not feeling so smug anymore. He grins then so brightly. It's identical to the way her Tate used to grin and she feels that stabbing pain again.

"You-" He starts to say something but is cut off by a new voice.

"Dude who are you talking to?" Both Tate and Violet whirl around and Violet's breath catches in her throat upon seeing who it is. It's the Goth girl from the beach on Halloween, the one with the side of her head blown off. Stephanie Boggs. One of Tate's soon to be victims. Violet's stomach twists uncomfortably.

"What? Erm- I- No one!" He lets out a shaky laugh, convincing nobody. The Goth girl stares at him with one perfectly raised eyebrow before shaking her head and turning to leave him be.

"And they say I'm a freak." She mutters as she's walking away and Violet's eyes widen before she glances at Tate to read his reaction. He's standing perfectly still, staring after the girl and you'd never notice anything wrong if it weren't for his eyes. Cold and black.

 _Freak._ She shivers. There's something about his eyes that's been on her mind for a while but she can't quite think what.

* * *

It's nine o'clock in the evening and she's desperate for a cigarette in a way she hasn't been ever since she died. The feeling came on so suddenly it stopped her in her tracks and now she's rummaging around Tate's room because surely, surely he had to have some stashed somewhere. She'd never seen him smoke in her life (and afterlife for that matter) but she won't let herself believe he doesn't own at least one packet and she's desperate.

She's looking under the bed when she finds it. A box, unlocked and unguarded and calling to her to open it. Inside she finds a ton of razor blades and one wicked sharp looking knife. All the silver glints at her merrily and she reaches out to run the tip of her finger along the knife edge. The skin breaks and then heals and she could scream. She snaps the lid closed and shoves it back under the bed before reaching back under to see if he has anything else stashed under there. In the end she comes up with two guns ( _the_  guns) and a half empty packet of cheap cigarettes, the kind she'd normally never touch. She lights one up and inhales, coughing and spluttering until she remembers how to do it properly.

 _Nothing_.

She feels no relief. She cries for the first time since she's been dead. It's not fair, not fair, not fair. Amongst all her inner turmoil she fails to notice his presence till he's leaning right behind her, chin hovering over her shoulder as if he were about to rest it there. Like he used to do. She turns her head slightly and he turns his and she stares at him through watery eyes.

"I can't feel anything." _Nothing but you._ She thinks for a wild moment then that maybe this is hell. She's in hell with the devil himself.

"I know." He coos, reaching for her hand and entwining their fingers in what can only be an attempt at comforting her. She has to hold back another sob at realization that it actually is comforting, his hand in hers, linking them. The cigarette dies in the grip of her other hand.

* * *

She's been such a selfish idiot. Sulking around obsessing over her own problems. She's let herself forget the bigger picture, let herself forget what date draws ever closer. Tate's going to kill fifteen people in a weeks time and she has no idea how to stop it, if she even can. He's a ticking time bomb, his minuets are running out and she has no clue how to disable a bomb.

* * *

Addie's crying. Violet watches discreetly from her position hidden in the shadows as Tate does all he can to comfort his big sister. Addie's been having a really rough week, Violet's watched from the window as every day the poor girl is harassed by evil little children and cruel teens alike whenever she returns home. It's like they lie in wake for her, positively gleeful at the prospect of torturing the innocent soul.

It makes her hate the world a little bit more with every passing insult and shove. She listens with a growing sense of foreboding as Addie tearfully admits all that's happened to her, including things Violet herself hadn't even known, things that make her head dizzy as rage builds behind her eyes. Tate listens with a perfectly calm look on his face, a mask that hides his own fury so very well. Her heart drops when he quietly asks Addie for the names of every high schooler who ever said a bad word against her (he leaves the children who mock his sister out of it for now) or did more. She names fifteen people before breaking down sobbing, saying she can't remember the rest. But it's enough for Tate, Violet can see, as he nods grimly and kisses the top of his sisters head. A hard determination in his eyes. He's been planning this for a while, all he needed was a motive and now? Now he has it. 

As Tate sleeps she takes the guns from under his bed and takes them outside to bury. It's a pathetic attempt to stop him from shooting up the school she knows. If anything she hopes it'll buy her some time to talk him out of it. Buy her enough time to do something- anything to stop the future she knows from unfolding. She's standing in the moonlit backyard with a shovel in one hand and one of the guns in the other (having already set down its twin) when Nora appears. Violet hasn't seen her at all since being here and her sudden appearance causes her such surprise that she drops the gun.

"Careful child, do you want to set it off and kill us both?"

"It isn't even loaded." She replies with a roll of her eyes, leaning on the shovel and studying the original owner of the house carefully. Nora huffs and fiddles almost nervously with her handkerchief.

"Are you intending to bury those things?" Nora asks, gesturing toward the guns still lying harmlessly on the ground.

"Yeah." She says in an exasperated tone, wishing Nora would just go away and leave her be. Nora stares at her the way Moira stared at her that first day. Like she can see through her. Violet shifts uncomfortably under the weight of her stare.

"You don't belong here." The older women murmurs softly and Violet just stares at her.

"I'm pretty sure none of us do but what can we do about it?" She tries to brush it off but the look Nora gives her tells her she doesn't succeed.

"No. I know of every death on this property and yours ins't one of them and yet you're here. How? Why?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You silly little girl. You can't change anything. You surely realize that don't you? I don't know what precisely it is that you want to change but you won't succeed if it's to do with this house."

"If that's so then what's the point? Why am I even here if it's not to do something?" She's angry now because what the fuck was she doing here? Why had the universe decided to screw everything up for her even more? It can't all be just to torment her and yet...

"I have no doubt that some higher power sent you here in the order of goodness, but this is the devils playground my dear and the devil _always_ wins." Nora squeezes her shoulder and Violet flinches away. Nora shakes her head sadly and moves past her to return to the inside of the house.

"I won't give up on him." She calls after her. It's a lie and they both know it.

"You already have." Nora leaves her alone then with the faint humming of a baby's lullaby in her wake.

* * *

In the end Nora is right and she can't be bothered anymore. It's awful, so awful that she's just going to step back and let events unfold how they're supposed to but she's so tired. So sick and tired of all the bullshit and why should she be the one to carry this heavy task on her shoulders? She sits on the stairs and watches him leave for school, hidden guns in his bag and she continues to sit there for hours, watching the door. Waiting, waiting, waiting. When he comes home, he has blood on his face and a cruel smirk on his lips.

"Who are you?" She asks without emotion, looking up at him. He's not Tate, not the Tate she knew, not the Tate she'd been getting to know. Dully she acknowledges that actually she does know who he is. She's encountered him before.

Basement.

Byron.

Or was it Byron and then basement? It doesn't matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore.

"I could ask you the same question." He replies before moving past her and retiring to his room.

She continues to sit there and watches as Constance comes home, utterly oblivious to everything around her. She waits till there's pounding on the front door and then SWAT team are swarming into the house like flies and rushing past her up the stairs, Constance tailing them with wails of a broken mother. She waits for the last one of them to pass her by before getting to her feet and following them.

By the time she reaches Tate's room he's lying on the floor near dead. She goes over to him unseen by all and kneels beside him. His mouth is overflowing with blood and it seeps out and over his skin. He's crying. Tears and blood mingling as one. When he finally closes his eyes and embraces death she closes her eyes too and never opens them again.

* * *

In the beginning god declared, let there be light. Now there's only darkness and god doesn't declare much of anything anymore.

 


End file.
